Errata about The Register

byitalovignoli

It looks like the communication between myself and Iain did not work in the proper way yesterday evening (European time), because a couple of significant inaccuracies have crept in the text of the article:

1. The Document Foundation will probably announce a ROADMAP for LibreOffice OnLine sometimes in late April or early May. A ROADMAP and not a PRODUCT, and this should be absolutely clear. At the moment, there is no reason to expect a change in the previously announced release timeframe: “sometimes in 2013″.

2. The Android port is under way, but is the PORTING of the code to be around 80% (and not the CODING, which is still below 50%). The Android port is not a simple endeavor, and it will ask for a lot of CODING efforts once the PORTING has been completed. One of these efforts is a new touch interface, which is – by itself – a huge development effort. This is the reason why TDF will not be in the position of making ANY announcement about LibreOffice on Pads – including a roadmap – before 2013.

The Document Foundation The HTML5-based cloud version of LibreOffice is not coming next month, regardless of reports that it was due to go online in April. The Document Foundation’s Italo Vignoli has issued an “errata” concerning the comments which led to the reports that notes that the previously announced release timeframe for LibreOffice OnLine has not changed and is still “sometime in 2013″. What Vignoli did announce was that a roadmap for the development would be produced in “late April or early May”.

LibreOffice OnLine is a version of LibreOffice that uses the Broadway GTK+ backend to render the user interface onto an HTML5 canvas in a browser; the Broadway backend is still listed as experimental by its developers.

Vignoli also took the opportunity to correct the impression given in the reports that the Android port of LibreOffice was nearing completion, pointing out that the porting of the office suite’s code was at around 80% complete – that refers to the process of getting existing code to compile on the platform. The writing of the code needed to put a touch-oriented user interface “which is – by itself – a huge development effort” is still below 50% complete. The Document Foundation will not, because of this, be “making ANY announcement” about tablet versions of LibreOffice before 2013 and there will not be any roadmap published before that time.

advantages:
-No need to know how to download or install LO (done instantly in a browser.).
-Instantly share files.
-No lost documents, they’re always kept in the cloud.
-Collaborative.
-Even if user has msft office installed, he/she can edit the shared docs easily. No need to open them with msft office or install other offline suites.
-Can still use offline version of LO and share quickly on the web with anyone that has email.

As a personal note, my Dad has quit the need for Msft office once he started using online suites like g-docs or zoho (even msft office web). He can also share without fear of the other end not being able to edit or view correctly the docs.